David Bronstein was born in Bila Tserkva, Ukraine in 1924.[1] He showed early promise, debuting in the 1939 Ukrainian Championship at age 15.[2] A year later, his strong 2nd behind Isaac Boleslavsky in the 1940 Ukrainian Championship earned him the Soviet national master title.[1,3] Four years later he qualified for the USSR Championship (1944), where he finished 15th and notched his first career victory over Mikhail Botvinnik. He improved to 3rd in the USSR Championship (1945), which garnered him a spot on the lower boards in Soviet team events, where he performed well.[4] He further progressed in smaller events with good results, such as winning two Moscow championships in a row.[5] But his performance against the
best opposition was not yet strong enough to achieve the Soviet grandmaster title.[6] FIDE still invited him with six other Soviets to the Saltsjöbaden Interzonal (1948).[7] Bronstein won, and was immediately awarded the Soviet grandmaster title.[6] He carried this excellent form forward, sharing 1st in both the USSR Championship (1948) and the USSR Championship (1949). He went on to tie Boleslavsky for 1st in the Budapest Candidates (1950), and won the subsequent playoff match. Bronstein had earned the right to face title holder Mikhail Botvinnik in a world championship match.

Botvinnik had played no chess in public since he had won the FIDE World Championship Tournament (1948), but he studied thoroughly by annotating every game Bronstein had played since the start of the Saltsjöbaden Interzonal.[8] Beginning in January 1951, Botvinnik also began compiling a notebook filled with his latest ideas in all the openings he thought might figure prominently in the match.[9] Bronstein claimed that Botvinnik hadn't played since 1948 "because he did not want to reveal his opening secrets."[10] Botvinnik finalized his preparation just days before the match with two secret training games against Viacheslav Ragozin.[11] Bronstein also played two training games, against Semyon Abramovich Furman and Paul Keres.[12]

Match conditions had been decided at the Paris 1949 FIDE congress.[13] The winner would be the first to score 12 1/2 points from a maximum of 24 games, with the champion enjoying draw odds. The time control was 40 moves in 2 1/2 hours, and 16 moves an hour thereafter, with an adjournment to the following day after five hours of play.[13,14] According to FIDE rules, the winner would receive $5,000 and the loser $3,000,[13] but Andrew Soltis maintains that Botvinnik and Bronstein actually got considerably less than this.[15] If the champion lost, he had the right to play the new champion and the winner of the next three year candidates cycle in a three player match tournament for the title. [13,16] The games were played in Moscow's Tchaikovsky Concert Hall under the direction of arbiter Karel Opocensky and controller Gideon Stahlberg. The seconds were Ragozin and Salomon Flohr for Botvinnik, and Alexander Konstantinopolsky for Bronstein.[17]

Bronstein opened the match with the Dutch Defense. Botvinnik considered himself an expert on both sides of the Dutch, and had not prepared for this system.[9,18] Botvinnik suspected that Bronstein meant to "force me to fight against my 'own' systems," a ploy he dismissed as "naive."[18] After scoring +0 -1 =2 in three attempts with the Dutch, Bronstein abandoned it after game 9. By game 22, Bronstein led by a point and needed only win once more, or draw twice in the last two games, in order to unseat the champion. Botvinnik responded with one of his best games of the match. He describes the final move of the 23rd game, 57. ♗g5: "Zugzwang...Bronstein needed forty minutes to convince himself of the inevitability of defeat."[19] Bronstein could still have become champion by winning the final game, but after pressing with the white pieces for 22 moves, he appeared to be without winning chances and accepted Botvinnik's draw offer.[20] By tying the match score 12-12, Botvinnik retained his title.

After the match, Botvinnik was complimentary to his opponent, noting that Bronstein "presses the attack with remarkable power, he has an excellent command of openings and is frequently able to wrest the initiative from the start."[21] Years later, Botvinnik and Bronstein spoke in less friendly terms about the match. Bronstein complained that "When the 24th game was finished, many journalists came to the stage and asked Botvinnik to hold a press conference. The Champion agreed but 'forgot' to invite me to attend."[22] Botvinnik accused Bronstein of "outrageous" behavior: "He would make a move and quickly go behind the stage, then... suddenly dart out and disappear again. In the auditorium there was laughter, and this hindered my playing."[23]

Bronstein has controversially hinted that there was government pressure on him to lose the match. In a 1993 interview he explained that "There was no direct pressure... But... there was the psychological pressure of the environment..." in part caused by his father's "several years in prison" and what he labeled "the marked preference for the institutional Botvinnik." Bronstein concluded that "it seemed to me that winning could seriously harm me, which does not mean that I deliberately lost."[24]

Marmot PFL: I wonder whether Botvinnik was really all that powerful. Remember that he was WC yet did not play on the 1952 Olympiad team (keres, Smyslov, Bronstein , geller). Was that paying a debt to Keres for 1948, and maybe to Bronstein for '51, or did he simply not want to play unless he could be 1st board? (Keres was Soviet ch. but played poorly on bd 1, 6.5 out of 12).

Marmot PFL: <whatthefat> As WC Petrosian also had some bad tournaments, but always played board 1 with excellent results. So I don't think it was quite fair to Botvinnik to demote hum like that. Tournaments and team events seem to have different psychology. (I noticed that Euwe didn't play for Holland either, wonder what that was about.)

A similar case was the 1970 USSR v. World match. Fischer had not played much while Larsen had won several tournaments in the last year, so he demanded bd 1. Fischer surprisingly agreed, probably so he wouldn't meet Spassky again before the 1972 match.

<"I have come to the conclusion that on the whole Botvinnik dominated. He played more strongly, even though he was in far from ideal form... At the end of the match Bronstein played at least no worse, deservedly winning the 21st and 22nd games. <It was perhaps only these two games that Bronstein conducted well from beginning to end...>>

Of course I would never argue with a great player like Kramnik. He seems to think that Bronstein hardly deserved to win the title. Personally I think David Ionovich deserved a one-year reign, like Tal and Smyslov.

Unlike those two players, though, Bronstein had not won the Interzonal (or the playoff)! And this match was full of errors. Probably it had more serious errors than any match right up to Fischer-Spassky 1972.

So if Bronstein had won it would have been more through luck than skill.

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